Senior Software Engineer (Data & AI Enablement)

Job overview

UCLH is looking for a Senior Software Engineer to lead the design and delivery of secure, high-quality data pipelines. This will ultimately lead to AI-ready platforms that let clinicians and researchers move faster from hypothesis to patient impact.

You'll join the SAFEHR team that turns routinely-collected NHS data into research-grade assets. The stack is modern (R, Python and moving to a data platform) and the problems are hard (clinical data at scale, governance, real-world messiness). This role would also be suitable for a research software engineer or data engineer as there are considerable overlaps in skills and abilities.

This is a leadership role. You'll line-manage up to three engineers, develop our technical roadmap, and make architecture and technology decisions. You'll drive best practices in software engineering and data quality, and champion practices across the Trust's data environment.

This position is classified as Grade 8a, offering a competitive salary (£66,274 - £73,496). If you want technically demanding work with direct clinical impact: not just dashboards, but infrastructure that underpins clinical research, precision care, and operational excellence; we'd like to hear from you.

Main duties of the job

Software and Data Engineering

• Architect and deliver scalable data pipelines that extract, transform, and load clinical data from UCLH's data sources.

• Design and maintain data models that support reporting, advanced analytics, and research use cases — balancing normalisation, performance, and usability.

• Implement continuous improvements to the existing data warehouse, business intelligence, and analytical products, including identifying and reducing technical debt (e.g. duplication, fragile dependencies).

Architecture and Documentation

• Evolve the technical roadmap for SAFEHR's data engineering products, making architecture and technology decisions with key stakeholders.

• Produce and maintain documentation covering UCLH data and analytics systems, in collaboration with key stakeholders.

• Lead the development of documentation that enables the scalable, correct use of clinical datasets by reporting teams, clinical users, and research projects.

Leadership

• Line-manage up to three technical staff: set priorities, conduct appraisals, identify training needs, and foster an open, inclusive working environment.

• Mentor and develop colleagues technically, ensuring the team's overall standard of work improves over time.

• Lead the adoption of software engineering practices across the information services teams at UCLH: automated testing, code review, CI/CD, performance profiling, and documentation.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

For the full Person Specification and more information regarding the main responsibilities of this role, please refer to the attached Job Description.

Come and be a part of the best NHS trust in England to work for, according to our staff*  * UCLH top trust to work at in England - In the most recent NHS staff survey UCLH had the highest percentage of staff who said they would recommend us as a place to work, out of all general acute or acute/community NHS trusts in England – for the third year in a row.  UCLH recognises the benefits of flexible working for staff – To find out more, visit: Flexible working.   To discover more about what makes UCLH a great place to work, visit: Why Choose UCLH?